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Thursday, August 30, 2012

Gold mining promises big boost for Ethiopia's development

(Aug 30. 2012, (The guardian))--The outlook for many people in Ethiopia seems less than bright following the sudden death of the prime minister Meles Zenawi last week, yet as far as the country's natural resources are concerned, the outlook is golden. Gold reserves could be a source of greater development for the country.

Ethiopian mineworkers outside the gold mine Photograph: Sven Dumelie

British firm Nyota Minerals is about to become the first foreign company to receive a mining
licence to extract gold from an estimated resource of 52 tonnes in
western Ethiopia. Its chief executive, Richard Chase, was involved in
Tanzania's gold boom in the 1990s.

He believes Ethiopia has similar
potential. "There are huge areas of relatively underexplored and
unexplored prospective ground, and the infrastructure is not too
dissimilar [to Tanzania], although the availability of cheap electricity
is a definite plus," he says. Read more from The guardian.co.uk »